Xbox 360 screen freeze

Published on December 13, 2009 in Technology. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

What’s going on here?

This is what i was greeted with when playing call of duty modern warfare 2. The whole screen froze. After powering off and re-trying several times, the red ring of death appeared. Thankfully the XBOX was still under Microsofts 3 year extended warrantee. it is now with Microsofts service centre in Germany.  Previous conversations with friends who’ve had similar problems lead me to believe that the problem will re-occur after about another year, after which it will be out of warrantee and i’ll be buying a playstation 3 slim.

I’m not a huge game player, i don’t want to pay monthly or yearly for a service i will rarely use. As XBOX expands to include facebook and other apps, i’m told i have to be a gold member, i’m not, and don’t plan on being one. Friends tell me the PS3 has a web browser, blue ray player, connects great to mac’s streaming movies, (being recommended over the Apple TV no less). The only thing keeping me from selling my refurbished XBOX in part exchange for a new playstation is project nadal, however i now hear that nadal will use 15% of the XBOX’s processing power, and therefore not work with all existing games, and unlikely to work with those i play. So that too has been brought into question. It seems that Sony’s PS3 has sold 3.5million stations over the christmas 09. i’m seeing a re-surgence in the PS3 that will corner the XBOX into the ‘hardcore online gaming only’ community. the rest of us will be looking for a more rounded product.

Quotes i’ve heard and quotes i feel need to be heard

Published on November 12, 2009 in Quotes. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

There is a reason for everything, we just don’t have all the answers yet.

It’s feed it or kill it time for Apple TV

Published on November 11, 2009 in Mollerade Website. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

The Apple TV is ripe for development. Take a look at the hacks (www.appletvhacks.net) to see what the community is doing with this device to see what Apple should be doing with it, or check the wish lists.

I have a Mac mini connected to my JVC HD TV together with a wireless keyboard and mouse. I can check my emails, watch my downloaded tv and film, listen to music whilst browsing the web, and read the morning news whilst drinking my coffee.

Maybe I’m the exception, but my house has more than one TV… I know, its crazy, but even more crazy, I’d really like to have the same functionality as I do on my Mac Mini connected HD TV as I do on my other TV. Maybe in the future I want to buy a TV for the kitchen and repeat the same functionality their too. So what are my options?

1) By a Mac Mini or alternative small foot print computer for each TV? This isn’t a viable option. The cost of a Mac Mini is too high to buy one for each TV.
2) Use Aten 4x DVI Video Splitter together with their DVI extender to push my Mac Mini output onto multiple TV’s? Great as long as you don’t plan to control the second screen. The limited range of Bluetooth will cause problems.
3) By a Apple TV and modify the device to suit your needs? Perhaps for some, the addition of a few extra applications would suffice.

However, I like to think bigger. Take the Apple TV, put modified version of OSX similar to the iPhone OS that allows the Apple TV to install iPhone apps. Now you can have the same applications on your iphone on your Apple TV, including internet, email, streaming video (AirVideo), live TV (EyeTV), VNC (Jaadu VNC), Facebook, skype, photos, music… the lot!

Now build a new app for the iPhone that turns the iPhone into a game pad, keyboard, mouse (controller), with all the benefits of the phones hardware (accelerometer, compass, touchscreen) put to use on your TV. This helps keep the price of the Apple TV down whilst enabling you to increase the functionality of the phone.

My EyeTV iPhone App Early Review

Published on October 2, 2009 in Technology. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

First a quick note to those having problems getting this to work with their mac especially netgear WGR614V9 users, try a reboot of your mac.
As many have experienced, I recieved the ‘router incompatible’ message and red light, when eyetv preferences performed it’s testing. This led to 40 minutes of port forwarding but no green light. After searching the oracle that is google, i found within the comments section of various reviews a possible solution I had not thought of since my windows days, to reboot the mac. I did, and it worked. An hour later and again it didn’t work. What struck me was how disapointed I was with elgato and how unsurprised I was that they had not pulled this off. I’ve used eyetv on my mac mini for months but it’s buggy as hell and the latest releases of software don’t help. Perhaps they should hire the jaadu programmers, or maybe it’s the management that needs a kick.
I wanted to love this program, but I don’t. It just isn’t reliable. After it stopped working I rebooted my mac again, and again it started working.. For a minute.

Have I seen it stream video? Yes, but not for any length of time that would permit me to understand the genre of what I was watching.

Plus any software that is fixed by a reboot is a CF.
Update:Oct09: eyeconnect definately has a conflict with eyetv. I deleted eyeconnect from the library preferences pane and my eyetv does connect without needing to reboot the mac. Only I still get poor performance with the streaming so more tweaking to come.

Wait for the bugs to get fixed, and hope they don’t introduce any new ones :-)

What it should be. What it will be.

Published on September 5, 2009 in Technology. 0 Comments Tags: .

It has been a while coming, but there was much to think about. Finally a new dawn is rising, where information is freed from censorship and special interests, broadcast over the world in multiple channels. The global recession is impacting our world together with climate change and dwindling resources. The impact has focused our attention and is changing our priorities. Consumers turn technology against irrelevant advertising that serves only to distract us from the informationwe are after (be it entertainment or otherwise). Ad blocking software is a growing concern to internet based information outlets that rely on the revenue to run there business models. Demand for energy is growing, as is investment in alternative forms, notably fusion and renewables.
Banking reforms, open source software, the list of growing changes to well establish business models established since the first industrial revolution goes on and on. All this together has effect of providing us a unique opportunity to plan for a new future using new tools.